The present invention is generally directed to shredder blades and, more specifically, to a shredder blade capable of cutting material using two different cutting mechanisms.
Conventional shredder blades have a cutting mechanism along an outer perimeter, such as a sharp circumferential edge, serrated edges, or two or more cutting teeth with serrated edges therebetween. All of these shredder blades operate by shredding material into strips. While this method of shredding is considered satisfactory it is sometimes preferred to further shred materials beyond just turning material into strips.
One solution that has been developed is to cross cut material so that the material is shredded into very short segmented strips. This makes it exponentially more difficult to reassemble a shredded document and therefore increases the security of shredded documents. While various techniques have been developed for cross cutting material into smaller segmented strips, the techniques tend to be costly to manufacture.
It may be advantageous to provide a shredder blade that is adapted for cross cutting materials fed into a shredder; that may be readily manufactured; and that preferably cuts materials using two different cutting mechanisms.